1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for quoting, administering, maintaining, claim processing, and renewing life, health and related coverages for clients, especially group clients. Significantly, the method may be employed so that information regarding any aspect of the insurance transaction need only be entered once, minimizing the risk of error and providing additional security for the information. The method also supports a Management Information System tool for providing timely and accurate information on quotes, sales, claim status, and client administration.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Insurance administration benefits from computerized processing by minimizing the risks of lost and mishandled information as well as reducing the cost of doing business. Because of the multiple combinations of insurance products available, it is very important to prepare accurate proposals and illustrations of insurance products for each prospective client. Computerized processing is of assistance in this area as well.
In most insurance companies, requests for insurance quotes are typically processed on paper through a sales office and then sent to a corporate office for additional processing. The processing of these papers results in time delays, multiple requests for information, and the increased risk of error in collecting or processing information.
Previous processes have been produced to provide proposals in a group insurance setting. These products were inefficient, restrictive and time consuming for the users. Among the problems with previous quoting programs were the lack of comprehensive coverage databases and the inability to transfer information amongst the several departments within the insurance company.
Group insurance products generally have a renewal cycle of one to three years. As a result of this cycle, the need to provide not only temporal information about a group insurance transaction, but also information that spans a time interval, is critical. The paper-based processing of this information is cumbersome and expensive.